Today's motor vehicles have sophisticated electrical and electronic systems including one or more data processing devices that receive, store and process data, and then display information, provide other data, and/or issue control commands in response to the data processing. For example, automobiles may include a navigation system for processing route and location data, and then displaying suggested navigation information for the driver. Other data processing devices in motor vehicles include control devices for controlling the engine, the transmission, and other components of the motor vehicle. Car phones provided in motor vehicles may also be equipped with data processing devices. These are just a few non-exhaustive examples of the data processing devices that are conventionally provided in motor vehicles.
Separately and externally from motor vehicles, various different electronic input/output terminals are conventionally in use: For example, it is quite typical today that a person will use a stationary (i.e. desktop) computer at home and/or at work, and/or a portable laptop computer, and/or a portable electronic organizer or personal digital assistant. All of these devices, and still others, represent input/output terminals that can be used to input, receive, format, manipulate and then output various data as desired by the user.
To the present date, there have been only limited and rather cumbersome efforts to provide any interface or data exchange connection between the data processing devices in a motor vehicle and an external input/output terminal. One such conventional system is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,182,006 (Meek). This prior Patent proposes a separate remote control unit for exchanging data between an external input/output terminal or device and a navigation system in a motor Vehicle. Particularly, the remote control unit receives and stores data from an external input/output terminal, whereby these data may, for example, represent a list of addresses to which the driver of the motor vehicle intends to drive. Once the data is loaded into the remote control unit from the input/output terminal, the remote control unit is then carried to the motor vehicle and installed therein close to the motor vehicle's navigation system. Particularly, the remote control unit must be mounted so as to be able to carry out a close-range data exchange, for example preferably via an infrared transmission interface. Via this infrared interface, the remote control unit carries out a handshake process with the vehicle's navigation system, and then transmits the stored data to the navigation system.
The conventionally known system for exchanging data between an external input/output terminal and the navigation system of a vehicle suffers several disadvantages. Most significantly, this conventional system requires a specialized separate device, namely the specialized remote control unit, which must be separately carried, manipulated, and installed or mounted in the vehicle by the driver. Thus, the additional remote control unit represents additional “clutter” and complexity for the driver, and can easily be forgotten, misplaced, or lost. For these reasons, using the conventional system becomes an additional burden on the driver.